This whitepaper provides an overview of Citrix AppDNA with Liquidware Labs FlexApp.

This whitepaper has been authored by experts at Liquidware to provide guidance to adopters of desktop virtualization technologies. It provides an overview of FlexApp concepts and ways in which FlexApp can serve as a cornerstone in an application delivery strategy. FlexApp Application Layering is an integrated part of ProfileUnity that enables applications to be virtualized innately so they look native to the Windows operating system (OS) and other applications. FlexApp is a perfect complement to ProfileUnity, which provides full user- environment management (UEM) with advanced features such as Application Rights Management and context-aware settings for printer and policy management. Although FlexApp is cost effectively licensed with ProfileUnity, the solution can be licensed separately if your organization has already standardized on an alternative UEM solution. Application layering leads to much higher rates of compatibility than earlier technologies, which used application isolation to virtualize applications. Once applications have been packaged for layering, they are containerized on virtual hard disks (VHDs) or virtual machine disk files (VMDKs) and can be centrally assigned to users on a machine-level or context-aware basis. FlexApp DIA (department installed applications) are compatible with virtual, physical, and Server Based Computing (SBC) environments such as Citrix XenApp and RDSH. Select users in specialized virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments can also be empowered to install their own applications through a similar feature in ProfileUnity known as FlexApp user-installed applications (UIA). FlexApp DIA greatly reduces desktop administration overhead by dramatically reducing the need for traditional software distribution and a reduction in the number of base images needed to support users. FlexApp UIA was designed to make more users, including knowledge and task workers, compatible with VDI. Together, FlexApp UIA and DIA are powerful allies of VDI users and administrators.

User Profile Management on Microsoft Windows desktops continues to provide challenges.  Most Administrators find that Roaming Profiles and even Microsoft UEV generally fall short due to several factors. Profile Corruption, Lack of Customization, and lack of Enterprise Features are just some of the top shortcomings of Microsoft Windows profile management with these options.

Basic tools such as roaming profiles do not support a mixed operating environment, therefore it does not allow users to move among desktops with mixed profile versions, e.g. Windows 7, Windows 10, Server2008, 2012 r2, etc.

The lack of support of mixed OS versions makes Microsoft profile management methods a serious hindrance when upgrading/migrating operating systems. Microsoft profile management tools also only support very limited granular management, so admins do not have the ability to exclude bloated areas of a user profile or to include files and registry keys outside of the profile. Profile bloat is one of the number one reasons for long logon times on Windows desktops.

Most organizations who will upgrade from a previous Windows® OS, such as Windows 7, to Windows 10, will want the flexibility to move at their own pace and upgrade machines on a departmental or ‘as needed’ basis.  As a result, management of Microsoft profiles and migration become a huge challenge for these environments because neither operation is seamlessly supported or functional between the two operating systems.  

A user’s profile consists of nearly everything needed to provide a personalized user experience within Windows.  If one could separate out the user profile from Windows and enable dynamic profiles that can adapt to any Windows OS version, several advantages can be realized:

• User state can be stored separately and delivered just-in-time to enable workers to roam from workspace to workspace
• Users’ profiles can co-exist in mixed OS environments or automatically migrate from one OS to the next, making OS upgrades easy and essentially irrelevant during a point-in-time upgrade
• Integral policies and self-managed settings, such as local and network printer management, as well as security policies, can be readily restored in the event of a PC failure or loss (disaster recovery)
  

Given the growing complexity and diversity of Windows desktops technologies, today’s desktop administrators are looking for better ways to manage user profiles across the ever-increasing spectrum of desktop platforms available. In this whitepaper, we will cover the issues inherent with Roaming Profiles and how ProfileUnity addresses these issues.

Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp delivers full Windows VDI, hosted session desktops, as well as applications to meet the demands of an expansive variety of use cases, allowing employees to access their apps, desktops and data without the limitations of traditional Windows desktop solutions. Citrix is known all over the world for its leading desktop solutions — for good reason: Citrix expertly solves Windows delivery and desktop challenges for customers. In order to make the Citrix desktop experience seamless for end users and desktop administrators, Citrix currently provides basic solutions that solve some longstanding Windows challenges in two key areas – User Profile Management and Application Layering. Liquidware Labs – a Citrix Ready Premier partner – also offers solutions that address the challenges of User Profile Management and Application Layering in Windows desktop environments. Our ProfileUnity solution offers full-featured User Environment Management (which encompasses User Profile Management). FlexApp, which can be integrated with ProfileUnity or used as a stand-alone solution, addresses the area of application layering. This paper initially covers the topics of profile management and user environment management, and then shifts focus to Application Layering. The purpose of this document is to outline the typical uses cases for the Citrix solutions, and then go on to explain when it is more appropriate to utilize the more sophisticated ProfileUnity with FlexApp solution to more completely address gaps in the desktop environment.

Enterprises today are faced with many challenges, and among those at the top of the list is the struggle surrounding the design, deployment, management and operations that support desktop applications. The demand for applications is increasing at an exponential rate, and organizations are being forced to consider platforms beyond physical, virtual and cloud-based environments. Users have come to expect applications to ‘just work’ on whatever device they have on hand. Combined with the notion that for many organizations, workspaces can be a mix of various delivery approaches, it is vital. to better understand application use, as well as information such as versioning, resource consumption and application user experience. This whitepaper defines three major lifecycle stages—analysis, user experience baselining and operationalization―each of which is composed of several crucial steps. The paper also provides practical use examples that will help you create and execute an application-lifecycle methodology using Stratusphere UX from Liquidware.

Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp delivers full Windows VDI, hosted session desktops, as well as applications to meet the demands of an expansive variety of use cases, allowing employees to access their apps, desktops and data without the limitations of traditional Windows® desktop solutions. Citrix is known all over the world for its leading desktop solutions — for good reason: Citrix expertly solves Windows delivery and desktop challenges for customers. In order to make the Citrix desktop experience seamless for end users and desktop administrators, Citrix currently provides basic solutions that solve some longstanding Windows challenges in two key areas – User Profile Management and Application Layering. Liquidware Labs – a Citrix Ready Premier partner – also offers solutions that address the challenges of User Profile Management and Application Layering in Windows desktop environments. Our ProfileUnity solution offers full-featured User Environment Management (which encompasses User Profile Management). FlexApp, which can be integrated with ProfileUnity or used as a stand-alone solution, addresses the area of application layering. This paper initially covers the topics of profile management and user environment management, and then shifts focus to Application Layering. The purpose of this document is to outline the typical uses cases for the Citrix solutions, and then go on to explain when it is more appropriate to utilize the more sophisticated ProfileUnity with FlexApp solution to more completely address gaps in the desktop environment.

Desktop DR - the recovery of individual desktop systems from a disaster or system failure - has long been a challenge. Part of the problem is that there are so many desktops, storing so much valuable data and - unlike servers - with so many different end user configurations and too little central control. Imaging everyone would be a huge task, generating huge amounts of backup data. And even if those problems could be overcome with the use of software agents, plus de-deduplication to take common files such as the operating system out of the backup window, restoring damaged systems could still mean days of software reinstallation and reconfiguration. Yet at the same time, most organizations have a strategic need to deploy and provision new desktop systems, and to be able to migrate existing ones to new platforms. Again, these are tasks that benefit from reducing both duplication and the need to reconfigure the resulting installation. The parallels with desktop DR should be clear. We often write about the importance of an integrated approach to investing in backup and recovery. By bringing together business needs that have a shared technical foundation, we can, for example, gain incremental benefits from backup, such as improved data visibility and governance, or we can gain DR capabilities from an investment in systems and data management. So it is with desktop DR and user workspace management. Both of these are growing in importance as organizations’ desktop estates grow more complex. Not only are we adding more ways to work online, such as virtual PCs, more applications, and more layers of middleware, but the resulting systems face more risks and threats and are subject to higher regulatory and legal requirements. Increasingly then, both desktop DR and UWM will be not just valuable, but essential. Getting one as an incremental bonus from the other therefore not only strengthens the business case for that investment proposal, it is a win-win scenario in its own right.